More and more of the ever growing human enterprise is devoted to scientific engineering, and artistic inquiry, exploration, and experimentation. These efforts result in various forms of what will be termed for purposes of this application, “content”. Content is created, developed, or formulated in a variety of contexts and by individuals or business entities, including non-profit and for-profit institutions and companies. Scientific or engineering research and development efforts typically produce technology-based content. Prototypes, machines, systems, processes, data, software, and inventions represent just some of that which results from these efforts. Artistic or literary efforts produce content that is manifested in a wide variety of forms such as works of fiction and non-fiction, movie and television treatments, screenplays, visual displays, software, choreography, and architectural works.
Governments have sought to encourage these many efforts by putting in place laws that extend legal protection to certain aspects of the content. Copyright law protects certain artistic and literary content automatically upon its expression in a tangible form. Trade secret law protects information (such as that which could be developed during the course of any of the above forms of inquiry) that has value and is not publicly disclosed. Patent law allows patents to issue for various forms of inventions that meet certain statutory guidelines.
The specific content that results from these many various creative and inventive efforts has widely ranging potential or actual value and thereby presents many, widely ranging investment opportunities. Only limited mechanisms, however, are available by which investors can invest in this wide range of opportunities. The mechanisms by which investors can make highly focused investments in a very specific area of technology or other type of content is even more limited. An “investor”, for purposes of this application, may be any person or entity such as for-profit or non-profit, pubic or private company. The very specific content that is or may be of interest to an investor and to which an investment opportunity shall be directed shall be termed, for purposes of this application, “target content”.
One traditional option available to an investor who wishes to invest in certain content is to buy the publicly traded shares of a company that is known to be developing that certain content. The content may be in, for example, a specific area of technology. However, most publicly traded companies do not develop a single form of content, such as one specific form of technology. The research and development efforts of a publicly traded company are typically directed to many different types of technologies, in part to spread the risk of the company over many areas. As a result, by buying shares of such a company, an investor is in reality investing in the many different specific forms of content, not just the target content, that has been or is being developed or created at the company. The price of the shares therefore reflects the potential and actual value of all content—for example, a target technology and one or more other technologies—but also all of the other efforts and overhead of the company. An investor currently cannot isolate an investment to a single target technology from all of the other technologies of one or more companies.
Mutual funds or other collective investment opportunities are identified at times as having a certain technology focus in the stocks or securities which are offered. For example, some mutual fund companies offer “select” portfolios such as in energy, or medical delivery, or medical equipment and systems, or software, or wireless technologies. However, such portfolios again only offer investment opportunities in the publicly-traded shares of companies, some, but not all of the content which they have developed is in the portfolio area. Again, such funds do not permit highly focused investments in a very specific technology or other form of content.
Certain companies—typically privately held companies, such as start-up companies—focus on the development of one, or more very limited range of content, such as that which is related to a specific technology. Only in certain circumstances do such companies permit third party investments. Furthermore, investing in a privately held or a start-up company is often considered to be a high risk gamble. Such investments are renowned for poor investment liquidity, that is, lacking the ability for the investment to be easily converted through an act of buying or selling with minimum loss of value. Typically, because of the high risk involved, the conventional instruments that are available to investors to invest in start-up companies are designed to have a certain degree of technology diversity, and do not facilitate investments in highly focused content areas. Such instruments are of limited appeal to an investor with an interest in investing in a target technology.
Accordingly, none of the options available to an investor provide investments that are specific to content or offer investor diversity within a highly specific content area. Therefore, what is needed is a system and methods that permits investors to make highly focused investments in content of a very specific nature. The present invention satisfies the demand.